They’ve Been Telling Me to Come of Age, I’ve Been Going Through an Awkward Phase

There comes a time in every guy’s life when a friend announces to you that they are gay. Then you have to decide whether you should be honored that he trusts you with something so personal or slap then upside the head for not coming out earlier because you pretty much already knew because he had done everything to convey he was gay except actually hit on you (then there is the uncomfortable situation of deciding if you should be relieved or offended they never hit on you). That was what was going through my head when the lead singer of Neon Trees Tyler Glenn recently came out as gay in Rolling Stone. Seriously dude, I think pretty much everyone already assumed that because you did everything short of making out with dudes in your videos. I would have been much more surprised if he announced his engagement to his female drummer.

Neon Trees were creative in the wake of The Killers, both with ties to Las Vegas playing pop rock, new wave infused music with a modern twist. For their second album, The Killers decided they want to be more rock than pop and tried to write Bruce Springsteen epics. Neon Trees went the other way going further down the new wave rabbit whole. Forget that the first two tracks off the their third album have titles like Love in the 21st Century and Text Me in the Morning, as you can tell from the album cover, Pop Psychology is straight out of the early eighties.

The first two Neon Trees albums followed the template, one extremely catchy first single, a couple good songs, and a bunch of filler. They have two multiplatinum songs and two albums that have even gone gold. Pop Psychology breaks that trend. But not in a good way. Those two previously mentioned songs with embarrassing titles go right up the cheesy like then leaps right by it. Sleeping with a Friend is the first single and best hope to catch lightning three times, but only ends up being mildly catchy and easily forgettable.

As overtly cheesy the first couple songs are, things do get a little more interesting in the second half starting with Unavoidable. The song is dreamy a duet with female where the syths finally get toned down. This song probably could have been a radio hit back into 1983, but thirty-one years later it probably too boring to get play. So Pop Psychology has no great songs, a couple good ones and a bunch of filler. It looks like Neon Trees may be resigned to two-hit wonderdom which is too back for the band because it is not enough to have a lengthy career and too many hits to be a much more celebrated one hit wonder. Thirty years later, more people remember Dexy's Midnight Runners than Level 42.

Song to Download – Unavoidable

Pop Psychology gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.